Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
in England, I took one of the open-air taxis from the airport to his
house on the beach south of the capital of Papeete.
I was shocked to find my host crippled with the bends. Although he
could walk laboriously with crutches, he spent much of his time in a
wheelchair. Discussing his accident, he told me that he'd been diving
deep trying to catch a new species of fish. He spotted what he recog-
nized as a new species of angelfish at a depth of over two hundred feet.
Driven by his desire to capture this new fish, he pushed himself be-
yond the limits of safety and went even deeper. His downfall, how-
ever, was that he had not allowed adequate time since his last deep dives
for his body to rid itself of dissolved nitrogen.
Decompression sickness, or the bends, is caused when nitrogen gas
that has dissolved in your tissues—at depth and so under high
pressure—forms bubbles when you rise too quickly to the lower pres-
sure at the surface. It's just like uncapping—letting the pressure o¤—
a bottle of carbonated soda water. These bubbles can become lodged
in critical parts of your body and cause a variety of symptoms, from
joint pain to paralysis and even death. If a person rises to the surface
slowly enough to allow the dissolved nitrogen to gradually leave the
body through the lungs, clinical symptoms don't occur. Making repeated
deep dives too close together, however, results in nitrogen accumulat-
ing in the tissues, with a much greater danger that bubbles will form
on ascent. That's exactly what happened to my friend.
He still wanted to dive, though, and as long as someone was along
to help him he was able to do so, but he stayed in water shallower than
sixty feet. We went on several dives together; he said the aches and pains
he experienced on land disappeared as soon as he was underwater.
The island of Tahiti is truly spectacular, with its precipitous green
mountains, lush valleys, and palm-fringed beaches. I found the native
Tahitians friendly and cheerful, but the French I met were just the
opposite—many were rude, unfriendly, and mercenary. The prices for
the simplest items in the French-run shops were incredibly high.
Even more spectacular than the land was the underwater world. The
coral reefs and their hosts of inhabitants were healthy and, to my in-
experienced eye, seemed una¤ected by the nearby activities of man.
Unlike Easter Island, Tahiti was abundant with marine life.
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